Bothell's David Morgan is the go-to guy for Indiana Jones' handcrafted bullwhips

In an era when a $100 million production is common, a franchise that guarantees huge returns is Hollywood's Holy Grail. But just days before the release of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" — the fourth installment of the wildly popular Indy series — not everyone connected with the film is feeling giddy.

Bothell businessman David Morgan is bracing himself for the movie's release and the onslaught of orders rolling his way.

Morgan, 82, designed and handcrafted more than 30 of the now-legendary bullwhips cracked by Indiana Jones in the first three movies. And his company, David Morgan Inc., has provided eight of the whips used in the new release, which begins showing at midnight Wednesday.

"Sometimes these sequels can be big, and sometimes they can flop," Morgan said from his cramped workshop tucked away in a secluded business park. "But every ... time an Indiana Jones movie comes out, we have a big influx of orders for whips."

Requests for Morgan's whips are already rolling in, and once again it's time for his company to bear down for the rush. The company has a six-week waiting list for the whips, and craftswoman Meagan Baldwin said she expects the wait to grow to three months.

"I am up to my eyeballs in orders," she said.

Customers often call looking for a perfect replica of the whip that Indiana Jones cracks in the movies, but no such single whip exists. Indy uses many types of whips throughout the four movies, depending on the effect the filmmakers want to achieve. For "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Morgan provided the filmmakers with eight whips, ranging in length from 8 to 10 feet. And he was not the only person who manufactured whips for the latest film; an Australian named Terry Jacka produced some, too.

Morgan, who also created the whips used in "The Mask of Zorro" and "Batman Returns," took a roundabout path to become whip maker to the stars.

The Canadian-born Morgan moved from Spokane to Seattle in 1960 to teach metallurgy at the University of Washington. But by 1962, his wife, Dorothy, grew homesick for her native Australia. Air travel was costly, so the Morgans started a business that sold Australian goods. Plane tickets became a write-off, and David Morgan Inc. began.

Business was steady until Morgan hitched his wagon to a rising local retailer in the mid-1960s. "David sold Akubra slouch hats to Eddie Bauer when Eddie Bauer was just a guy running a business downtown," said Will Morgan, David's son and head of marketing for his father's company. "That really got the volume going on the business."

Morgan began importing more Australian goods, including whips made from kangaroo hide. An engineer at heart, he began learning how to make his own whips from Aussie experts beginning in 1970. His efforts proved fortuitous when, in 1976, Australia asked U.S. lawmakers to put an embargo on kangaroo leather to curb dwindling populations of certain kangaroo species. The ban crushed the nascent whip market.

"When we could no longer bring in kangaroo, the [Australian] whip makers wouldn't bother working in calfskin because it is weaker," Morgan said. "But I've always done [a] little craftwork of one type or another, and I'd been dealing in whips for some time. I knew what a good whip should be, and I knew I could make it."

Morgan began crafting his whips in calf hide, supplying them to circus performers, ranch hands and a tiny group of whip-cracking enthusiasts enamored with tales of the Wild West. He also published a few books on whip making and the history of whips. Morgan's reputation grew among a select few, including Glenn Randall Jr., the stunt coordinator for an action movie that would be called "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Randall placed Morgan's bullwhip in the hands of Harrison Ford, who played the archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones. The whip featured heavily in the movie, and even though Morgan had no direct contact with the cast or crew, his cachet within the whip-cracking community became legendary nonetheless.

"That was, of course, a milestone in terms of [Morgan's] reputation because that movie blew up," Will Morgan said.

"Raiders" grossed more than $384 million worldwide after its release in 1981, and suddenly everyone wanted to be like the wisecracking, whip-cracking Jones. Students from as far away as Peru came to Morgan to learn the craft of whip making.

Morgan no longer is the primary craftsman for his company. As he grew older, he handed over most of those duties to Baldwin, his one-time student. But when he does take a turn at braiding the malleable leather, Morgan's dexterity belies his 82 years.

"Whip making looks so easy when it is in his hands," said Baldwin, who apprenticed under Morgan 13 years ago. "But at the beginning, [making a whip] is like braiding spaghetti with 10 thumbs."

Morgan and Baldwin can each turn out three whips per week — a slow pace offset by the fact that the whips sell for as much as $895.

Whip sales saw a temporary spike with each sequel in the 1980s, but Will Morgan said he is noticing a groundswell of interest in the craft over the past decade thanks to a new generation of enthusiasts who use the Internet and Web video sites like YouTube to share their interest.

Shane Smith, an 18-year-old from Orange, Calif., is one such fan. He has posted several videos of his whip-cracking ability online and is a member of the IndyGear.com online community, one of many sites where enthusiasts talk whips.

"I got into cracking whips around age 12, when I wanted to be just like Indiana Jones," he said.

As for Morgan, he shrugs off repeated attempts to discuss his connection to the classic Indiana Jones character, deftly turning the conversation back to his craft.

"He's very modest about his contribution to pop culture, maybe partly because he's not that interested in it, but I think that he's more of an icon than he knows," Baldwin said. "Maybe it was just luck or timing, but he helped create this cultural icon."

Indiana Jones' popularity shows no signs of waning. At an auction of pop-culture memorabilia in Las Vegas March 15, a collector bought one of the bullwhips used by Indiana Jones for $70,150 — more than 78 times its original value.